


Victory

by Kispexi2



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-09
Updated: 2008-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kispexi2/pseuds/Kispexi2





	Victory

Priest Goudai Sanzo was a wise man; much wiser than I realized at the time. His lessons weren't just for Keny'uu but for me as well – even if I didn't recognize it.

I arrived at Zen'ou temple, as I do at most places, a little late. Not late enough to be annoying nor out of any desire to inconvenience but simply because something had distracted me as I was leaving. Kouryuu was sitting with a book – yes, even at three, he was an avid reader – when a sudden shaft of sunlight caught his hair. It lit up like a halo and I was transfixed. It felt like a noble truth was being revealed to me, only I was too slow, too stupid, to understand it. Then he looked up and smiled, lips parting to reveal his the gap left by his first lost tooth, and I thought how much that abandoned little boy meant to me. How much he'd changed my life, turning me into someone new.

If I'm honest, it was a bit of wrench to leave him but duty called and Goudai was a man I admired and respected. Besides, I knew he would not have summoned me without good reason. He was the most senior of the Sanzo priests and not given to issuing invitations on a whim. So I patted Kouryuu on his little golden head and told him – somewhat redundantly – to be a good boy; he was always good – if rarely 'nice'.

Priest Goudai Sanzo's pupils gave me a fine, though slightly awed, welcome. My reputation, it seemed, had preceded me. Ha! My reputation! I'd never been much interested in possessions or position and in my youth, my absent-minded bumbling caused my father – a high-ranking civil servant – much distress. I fear I was a disappointment to him and he died before I entered the temple and so he never knew of my 'success', although I never really viewed my being a sanzo as my doing. It simply _happened_.

For a couple of years after acquiring my title, my life progressed much as it had done before – except I was no longer expected to help with routine chores at the temple and I'd pass my greater leisure time drinking sake or smoking the pipe Priest Jikaku had given me. I'd like to claim my peaceful existence was shattered by Kouryuu's arrival but, despite the fact that he was a squalling bundle of indignation when I plucked him from the Yangtze and for two years screamed like he was screaming for all China, the plain truth is, he brought me a deeper contentment than I had ever known.

In fact, I was pondering this very paradox when Priest Goudai Sanzo led me into the acolytes' classroom where I had my first encounter with Ukoku – or Keny'uu as he was known then. He was a brash, brazen boy. Good-looking and far too clever for his own good. He wasn't the first of that sort I'd come across in life and I dismissed him as typical of the mould. Amusing in the short term, but liable to be tedious if one's exposure to him was more extended.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The day he challenged Goudai, my emotional response was almost as intense as when Kouryuu caught his first childhood illness but, instead of wanting to protect _this_ boy, I wanted to crush him. Me! A Sanzo priest and him just a slip of a smart-ass boy! My heart thumped in my chest and I experienced a strange kind of giddiness as the power of rage flooded my veins. I felt the power of the Maten, the power to control evil, surge inside me and I was a heartbeat away from using it. But then I looked at Goudai's face and knew there had to be another way, so I seized Keny'uu by the wrist instead and hauled him off to the temple cells.

I'd bruised him. There were four purpling stripes on the pale skin inside his wrist and I was glad. I wanted to crush him.

He gazed at his injuries, awe-struck, and looked up at me, something like respect glowing in those coal-back eyes.

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked, a tad breathlessly. "Your strength is something else!"

"Come now," I chuckled, bestowing upon him my trademark modest, yet enigmatic, smile - "I'm just a regular old man."

"_Regular_ old men don't have ponytails," he argued and I had to concede that was true. I'd never shaved my head, despite the convention.

"So there _are_ sanzo priests like you," he mused.

"Who wear ponytails?" I teased, warmed by the feeling of winning. "I didn't realize it was that odd."

He laughed. "I can't tell if you're brilliant or retarded." He paused, gazing through the bars on the cell door out at the inky night sky. "Hey ... I've got a question for you. Could you kill me if I asked you to?"

That question stayed with me over the years, coming back with all its feigned bravado and desperate need each time that my friend Ukoku Sanzo visited. Yes, I called him friend, even after what he did to Goudai. I had to. I still wanted to crush him, beat him, shake him out of his hopeless nihilism, but I couldn't ignore him because he'd changed me - just as surely as Kouryuu had. But whereas my little Kouryuu had awoken fiercely protective feelings of love in me, Keny'uu - _Ukoku_ \- had shaken me out of my smug routine and roused my anger. Anger I didn't even know I carried. And out of that anger came the burning desire to prove myself right and him wrong, to demonstrate that I was _better_.

And so we slipped into this thinly veiled, mortal game. All clever words and point-scoring. At the beginning, we even played chess or mah-jong but we were too evenly matched for the battle to be rewarding so we opted for riddles and wagers instead. I'd bet on how many rooks would roost on a single branch and he'd stake money on a fallen nestling being eaten by foxes before morning. We were both pretty good at guessing and so the game continued, neither one of us establishing a clear lead.

Until tonight.

As the youkai robber enters my room, the moonlight glints off his blade. He's here at Ukoku's behest, I'm sure. He means business and so do I. Because I've suddenly understood the lesson Goudai offered Keny'uu and I all those years ago. For the good man, the truly good man, there is only one way of definitively winning a battle, only one way of emerging triumphant from a fight. And I want to be good, for Kouryuu's sake, because he already believes I am.

So I step forward and extend my arms, shielding China's newest Sanzo priest and my beloved son as best I can. I wish I could have taught him this lesson more gently but I've only just grasped it myself.

I stand firm and wait for the knife to strike.


End file.
